The carriage turns into the woods.
Elizabeth looks out of the window. Even having come this far she is not easy.
She did make sure at the inn. The family is not down this summer.
What Appears at the Top of the Hill
The road climbs a long way.
Where the wood ends the carriage comes over the rise, and there across the valley is the house.
A large stone house. A ridge of hills stands behind it, and in front the stream widens into water.
What surprises Elizabeth is not the size.
It is that no hand shows. The water has not been forced into another course and the trees are not set out in rows. What was there has been left as it was and the house put into it.
She has never seen a place so well favoured by nature and so little spoiled by anyone.
Going Inside
Indoors is like out of doors.
The rooms are large and light and nothing in them boasts. Nothing is merely costly and no colour offends.
Elizabeth stands at a window and looks out. Every window gives a different view.
Then a thought crosses her.
That she might have been mistress of this house. That she might have called these rooms her own, counted what these windows show as hers, and welcomed her aunt and uncle here as visitors.
She pushes it away quickly.
The Woman Who Has Watched Forty Years
The housekeeper who shows them round is elderly.
A respectable woman, not much given to talking, and she changes when her master is mentioned.
Her aunt asks first. What sort of man is he.
The housekeeper answers at once. There is not a better man living.
Elizabeth is astonished inwardly. She has never heard anything of the kind.
The housekeeper goes on. Not one of his tenants speaks ill of him. It is the same with the servants. She has never seen his equal for looking after the poor.
Her aunt says, smiling, that few servants speak so of a master.
And the housekeeper answers her.
“I have never had a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.” (Chapter 43)
The room is quiet for a moment.
She speaks of his sister too. How much her brother thinks of the girl, and that there is nothing he would not do for her.
Before the Portrait
In the long room upstairs the pictures hang.
Elizabeth stands before one of them a long while.
The man in it is looking at her. There is something like a smile on the face. She has never once seen that expression.
The housekeeper says beside her that it was taken while his father lived.
Elizabeth thinks. So this is how he looks to the people of this house.
She now holds two accounts of one man, and they are opposites. One she was given at Meryton and one she is given here.
Meeting in the Grounds
The party goes out.
They are walking towards the stream with the gardener.
Then someone comes round the corner of the house.
It is Darcy.
Not ten paces off. There is no avoiding it.
They both colour. He stops, unable to say anything for a moment, then comes forward and speaks.
He asks whether her family is well. He asks when she came into the country. He asks how long she stays.
Some of it he asks twice. He is not collected either.
There is something gone out of his manner. Nothing looks down from above, and nothing is said as though it had to be got through.
He says he came back a day early.
Then he begs to be introduced to her companions.
Today, What the Place a Man Lives In Says
This chapter stands in a rare position in this series.
For thirty one chapters somebody has always misread. Here it is the other way. The person who has watched longest is right.
Two things stand behind that testimony.
One is the length. Since he was four goes in front of it. The face a person keeps for visitors lasts an afternoon. It does not last forty years.
The other is the position. Tenants and servants have no reason to see a master’s good face. How he treats them is not a thing that can be arranged, and arranged it would not hold.
The testimony Elizabeth was given at Meryton had neither. The length was a few weeks, and the man who gave it had something to gain by it.
What this chapter says is not that Darcy is a good man.
It is what to look at when you are choosing whose word to take.
How would someone who has watched you for years describe you?